goods available in such profusion in stores
are actually made. While struggling with
debilitating panic attacks, which led to a
fear of lying and then of crowded spaces
and bridges, then depression, Kristine
began to understand, with
the help of a therapist,
that not seeking out and
following her true passion
was harming her. “I thought
I could make a bunch of
money and buy a house and
be semi happy,” she says,
relecting on that time, but
semi happy wasn’t cutting it;
instead, she felt lonely and
isolated, and her body was
setting off an alarm.
Kristine left her job,
unsure what to do next. She had already
begun to sell cloth bags she sewed, and
hats and other accessories she knitted
out of her hand-spun yarn, but she knew
that investing more of her time in those
ventures wasn’t going to be fulilling long
term. Eventually, she recognised that her
real passion was natural dyeing, and she
gradually transformed her kitchen into her
laboratory, using the knowledge she had
gained in India as a starting point for a
deeper exploration into this ancient art
and science. First, Kristine sold her yarn
at pop-up shops, then she opened a small
storefront, and inally, in 2011, she moved
to Verb’s current location in Oakland,
where she has been growing the business
ever since.
Verb occupies 1,700 square feet of
space on a quiet block of San Pablo
Avenue bordering the city of Berkeley.
In the retail area of Verb, there is the
store’s own lines of yarn, dyed in the two
studios on the premises, one indoor and
one outdoor, plus a curated selection
of natural yarn and fabric from other
companies with similar ethical ideals.
For a product to make it into the store or
an event to be scheduled there, Kristine
prefers that it in some way supports the
continuation of a hands-on tradition and is
traceable to its source.
By providing customers with the
opportunity to learn how to create their own
textiles and spend time with other makers,
Kristine hopes to encourage important
conversations. Among the questions,
she would like people to consider and
converse about: how does what we choose
to consume affect others? How can we
redistribute money to those whose work
we believe in and who treat people, the
Earth and their animals kindly? How can
we work with our hands and be healthy and
inancially stable? And, particularly relevant
in the Bay Area, where the computer
companies of Silicon Valley so drastically
impact the cost of living: why are we willing
to pay computer programmers millions of
dollars but not the people who grow our
food and ibre?
Kristine says, “Through Verb I reclaimed
my normal life.” By ‘normal’, she is referring
to the time she spent as a
child with her grandparents
in Sterling, living in a
comfortable, safe community
where the residents know
each other by name and care
about one another and the
quality of their environment,
and where stitching is an
integral part of the social
structure.
Kristine learned from her
grandmother, her friends in
Sterling and from the Rabari
in India that making textiles is a way to
connect and share, tell one’s story and,
in the process, possibly make the world a
better place – that is exactly the normal life
Kristine is striving to lead today.“The world
was so big,
and I had no
idea who I
was supposed
to be in it”